


What Time Is It?

by FictionalFeather



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, kids dealing with trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-21
Updated: 2014-03-21
Packaged: 2018-01-16 11:56:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1346566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FictionalFeather/pseuds/FictionalFeather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But you've been broken since before the end and nobody knows how to fix anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Time Is It?

Except you lost everything.

You have home, shelter, reassurance, love, future, but you have nothing.

You breathe, and darkness settles in your lungs. You breathe and try not to focus on the panic.

What time is it, what time is it? How old am I, what year is this? What’s the date, what time is it?

You can’t stop answering your own questions. You stare at your phone, and every time the minute switches, relief floods you like your heart was the dam and its capability is damned. You can breathe around the weight before it starts to grow and reach out for you with the dragging, lagging creep of each second.

You’re terrified of these things you can’t name. For every thing chasing you through stretched hours, there’s another thing inside you counting the milliseconds you have left.

Bro’s worried about you. He’ll take your phone from you, plug it in to charge before it dies in your hands because you’ve been watching it so long. Days like that, bad days, days of wide-eyed blank stares and panicked questions (what time is it, what time is it?), he forces you up on the roof, even though the first time you’d seen him with a sword again you’d choked on the blackness and ended up shaking on your knees in front of the toilet. He’s trying too hard to figure out what’s between brother and caretaker and you feel like maybe it’s always been this way and you’re only seeing it now because he can’t figure out how to deal with you.

What time is it?

You don’t know how to deal with you.

John doesn’t breathe. He wakes up in the night gasping and dizzy. He told you he’s scared, and only a lifetime of cool, ironic, smooth, swag, (what time is it?), keeps you from giving him more than a glossing of your own issues.

Rose is afraid of the dark. At night she retreats to her room where she has nightlights to get rid of the shadows the lamps make, and more lamps to erase those from them. She confessed that the endless circle of darkness created by light has never tortured her like this. She exhausts herself with the need to crack one eye open and see that the darkness isn’t pure and unbroken when she tries to sleep. You tell her everything, because she’s her, and she offers her shoulder, her ear, her presence, prepared as always to provide what you need.

You ask what time it is.

Jade goes into hysterics when she can’t find Bec. She’s told you how strange it is that the thing causing her to sob and scream and see images of a black snarling muzzle would be the one she finds so comforting when he’s licking her face, tail wagging as she buries her fingers in his fur. She listens to your words and she’s just so _Jade_. She wants to hug you and not let go until you stop trying to reach for your phone. She asks how you are means it too much. She admits she kicked a hole in her wall when she tried to go to you and realized she couldn’t.

What time is it?

You can never stop calculating, figuring when your friends are waking up, going to bed, counting seconds gleefully until Bro takes you away from it, takes your phone and sits next to you and asks if you want to talk to someone. It takes only 14 seconds of flashes of the few times Bro’s really been your guardian, of trying to tell a therapist about everything, for you to say you have Rose. You ask him what time it is. He says it isn’t important. You start to panic. Hiccupping sobs and you run to your room and open your laptop and the time is there and all your friends are online. By the time Bro’s sliding your phone next to you, you’ve all decided you need to see each other (what time is it?), need to be with each other again, and Rose’s mansion is the only plausible place to hold you. Bro says the last thing you need is a deadline but he says he’ll pay for the ticket. And then it’s set and you know the time and date and it sits there in the front of your mind, theater-screen large, a countdown to something you can only hope is salvation, but what do you know?

(What time is it? A terrifying moment on the plane when you can’t check the minutes and you’re so worried about Jade because how will she get Bec here and what time is it?)

All three are waiting when you get off the plane and nobody remembers who was crying but for just then, just one moment then you didn’t ask anyone what time it was and _you don’t know_ how long you all embraced.

That first night you’re all in a pile and nobody can sleep. Nobody cares that you have to keeping checking your phone, or that Rose goes all tense when passing lights make shadows dance on the walls, or that John will sometimes gasp like he’d been holding his breath, or that Jade has to keep contact with Bec at all times. He’s curled up at her feet, she’s curled up beside John, head on his chest and hand reaching out to hold Rose’s, who’s on the other end with her head on your shoulder. You and John also have your hands clasped and you’re certain the ankle over yours is Jade’s.

Your sister, your best friend, and the sweetest girl in the universe.

What time is it?

It’s a mess. It’s a wreck piled over you, broken people nursing broken souls with broken minds you’re each secretly hoping can be healed by this coming together.

But you’ve been broken since before the end and nobody knows how to fix anything. You don’t know what time it is. No matter how many times you see the numbers, you don’t know what time it is.

What time is it?

Nobody knows who started crying first.


End file.
